Kobo isn’t the first on the color-reading scene; Boox and Pocketbook have had color readers and tablets for years. Both of these companies make beautiful, premium devices that are highly capable and customizable, but they don’t offer the plug-and-play ereader experience of a Kindle or Kobo. Of all these those who read I’ve tried it over the past year, and I’ve found that Kobos does the best job of combining a user-friendly interface with quality hardware. Now that device has a new trick with a color screen Clara Color.
Notably, Kobo beat the Kindle to get a color reader out of the gate. To be fair, Amazon is dealing with, well, everythingbut it is safe bet It says the Kindle color is coming soon. For now, Kobo’s Clara Color is the consumer-friendly color reader. The more powerful processor makes it sleeker than its already speedy predecessor, and the addition of color looks great without detracting from the crisp and easy-to-read text. I must confess that I am not a reader; I often return to my first love, print. But with the latest version of Kobo, a few weeks of reading on this comfortable, effortless machine has me more excited than ever.
Engadget
Kobo’s Clara Color has a beautiful design, a beautiful color screen, and a useful and fast operating system. This is the color reader to beat right now…until you see what Amazon does.
- A faster processor ensures fast loading of menus
- The color screen makes the book covers pop
- Excellent iIntegration with native libraries
- The OS makes it easy to find books and customize settings
- Provides access to third-party ePub books
- The screen is not as sharp and bright as the previous generation
- Kobo’s library is not as large as Amazon’s
Design and display
It is based on a display made by most electronic paper devices E Ink. Clara Color uses the company’s new Kaleido 3 panel, which adds a layer of Color Filter Array (CFA) printed on top of the existing black-and-white microcapsule layer. A color layer can display about 4000 colors at a resolution of 150 dpi. To be clear, a full-color page on Clara Color is nothing like what you get from the simplest LED screen. The colors of electronic paper are muted and saturated, reminds 70s comic book covers. However, unlike LED, E Ink color panels actually look better under bright light.
The monochrome microcapsule layer produces sharp, 300 dpi text like the previous generation. But the Clara Color page looks less sharp when placed side by side with the Clara 2E. Get close to the screen and you’ll notice noise in the white parts of the page. The warm front light is also more yellow. The nature of the color filter array is this: since it’s always there, any text you read will be filtered through that layer. I should point out that this is something I’m only mentioning because I’m writing this review and delving into the performance compared to the previous generation. In fact, when it comes to reading, I find I prefer the softer, warmer effect of Color. It reminds me of the delicious mass market Stephen King and Anne Rice I grew up reading.
Kobo’s customization options aren’t overly involved, but they do provide enough control that you can change things like font, font size, line spacing and margin width, as well as brightness and light temperature. Externally, Kobo Clara 2E and Clara Color look almost identical. On the color model, the screen is slightly more recessed and the soft-touch plastic is more textured, which is a benefit as it shows less fingerprints. The centimeter-wide bezels are big enough for your thumb, which, along with the textured back, makes it easy to hold the reader from a variety of positions. It’s small enough that I can hold it from behind, but I have bigger hands so it might not work for everyone.
With an IPX8 rating, Clara Color is fully submersible. I didn’t get very far with this review section, but I survived an accidental splash while washing my hands in the bathroom. Why was he in the bathroom? Because I keep my book next to the toilet so I don’t have to sit there and look at my phone. It was a tactic that got me reading again after I had my baby, and I was temporarily convinced I wouldn’t finish another book. I heartily recommend it, especially with a reading device like this one that can handle the watery environment of the toilet.
Reading experience
Clara Color’s new chip makes loading menus, searching and changing pages faster than the previous generation. The speed boost doesn’t make for a completely different experience, but faster page turns keep the action moving. As if Murderbot is protecting his people from HostileSecUnit1 and suddenly there’s another SecUnit at the bottom of the page, you need to know as soon as technologically possible what’s going to happen next. It’s also faster to check out a new book and check out previews, when everything on my respectfully curated TBR list looks like broccoli and I want ice cream.
The UX is identical to all Kobos that don’t support stylus input, with just four options in the sub-menu bar: Home, My Books, Explore, and more. Discover takes you to the Kobo store, where you can search for e-books, audiobooks, and titles from KoboPlus, the company’s monthly subscription for unlimited access to a range of books (aka Kobo’s answer to Amazon Unlimited).
Discover’s recommendations section has a list of titles called Just for You, and under Related Reading, it suggests books you might like based on what you’ve finished. The connecting threads between the titles are nothing surprising, but if you’re paying attention to what to read next, they offer a good place to start.
Kobo’s deep integration with OverDrive lets you grab any title in your local library with just a few seconds of setup and a library card. Clicking the three dots next to the “Buy” button on any book opens the option to check out (or keep) the e-book from your library. I’m impressed with how deeply Kobo supports this feature, placing something free and public alongside paid books and subscriptions.
It’s nice to have other features, such as yours Pocket Get articles from the web to read later in the more focused environment of your Kobo. There is also a beta web browser that I used to view the Wikipedia entry on the Mason-Dixon line when I read Percival Everett’s article. James and the one for the rook (bird) while singing Tana French Hunter. The browser isn’t equipped for heavy surfing, but that’s a good thing. The extra effort it takes to review keeps me on target in my reading. At the same time, I’m happy to get a little background information without having to pick up my phone, where distractions are plentiful and compulsive.
The Competition (aka Kindle vs Kobo)
There’s no escaping the fact that the Kobo reader is no Kindle. But the Kindle’s advantage over the Kobo lies not so much in hardware as in the availability of titles. The Kobo Clara Color is directly comparable to the standard Kindle. They have the same basic shape, the same screen size with 300 dpi text, and 16 GB of memory. But the Kindle is $50 cheaper.
However! The Amazon device will present you with ads on the lock screen, and it will cost you an additional $20 to remove them. It’s also not waterproof and doesn’t have a warm glow. No Kindle has a color display yet, but there are plenty of rumors that point to the move (quite obviously). on the horizon. For now, color is another point in Kobo’s favor.
However, if you’ve spent the last decade amassing a small library on Amazon, you won’t be able to access it on Kobo without extensive, illegal searches. I only have a few Kindle titles from my past, so starting over with Kobo didn’t feel like a loss.
Amazon’s e-bookstore is bigger than Kobo’s Kindle Direct Publishing exclusives and self-published books. Kobo has its own publishing house program, but smaller. However, any book from a major publisher will appear in both the Kindle and Kobo stores. Every title I looked for in the Kobo store was available.
Amazon subscription program, Kindle Unlimited, is even bigger, with four million combined audio and e-books available. By comparison, Kobo Plus currently claims 1.5 million ebooks and 150,000 audiobooks. Kobo’s plan is slightly cheaper at $10 a month for both reading and listening, or $8 for e-books only. Kindle Unlimited is $12 a month and gives you access to both formats. None of the subscriptions cover best-selling titles from major authors, but there’s still plenty to choose from.
However, Kobo’s e-book access is superior to the Kindle in two ways: the ability to make purchases from third-party outlets and the easier OverDrive experience. Amazon uses its own digital rights management (DRM) technology, while everyone else uses Adobe’s DRM. This means that if you buy a book from most major publishers on a third-party site (like ebooks.com or Google Books), you won’t be able to read an ePub file on your Kindle. there is a a few extra steps To read these titles on the Kobo, however, it’s easy enough. When it comes to OverDrive, it’s not about reading public library books on your Kindle difficult, but you must first go to OverDrive or your library’s website, find your book, and select “Read on Kindle” as the delivery option. With Kobo, you click the three dots next to Buy, select Borrow, and start reading seconds later on the same device.
Collection
The big question is, does the addition of color make the Kobo Clara Color better and worth the $10 over the previous generation? The faster processor alone makes up for the price increase, and the waterproof build, warm front lights, and lack of ads make for a higher-end reader that justifies the $50 price difference between the Clara Color and the basic Kindle.
As for the color screen, it doesn’t make much of a difference when you’re reading a regular e-book. The extra layer adds a little buzz to the space and gives everything a warmer glow. But I didn’t mind the minute drop in clarity and actually preferred the softer, more relaxed look of the page. The colors look great on the book covers in my collection, and the recommended titles draw me in with their muted blues and washed-out reds.
You’ve probably heard of the trick where you gray out your phone’s screen to make it less attractive. I guess so it actually works, so I have to imagine the opposite is also true. Anything that makes reading material more engaging and better able to compete with the technicolor onslaught of digital distraction is a win in my book.
